Introduction to Coaching by Providing Employee Feedback

Existing management paradigms places the focus of leaders on controlling the performance of their teams. This leads to a focus on managing job descriptions, not being a mentor and providing timely employee feedback. Leaders worry about performance against job descriptions rather than helping the team grow. As a result, performance becomes measured through “magically determined” standards or year-end rankings.

Coaching focuses on discovery and development. Coaching isn’t just about evaluating performance, but guiding individuals with great feedback. Coaches are great leaders that empower their team to contribute to the organization and guides them to organizational success without alienation. Coaching as managing doesn’t place mentorship as a subset of management, but at the heart of it.

Leaders create an environment where learning is at the heart of every interaction. They make managing about leading others within a collaborative setting.

Leaders challenge others to develop skills and abilities on an aspirational level. They help others become self-sufficient. The individual coached becomes setup to pass leadership skills to others around them. This turns others into leaders themselves. A leader seeks out opportunities to care about others’ personal development. They challenge other individuals to grow continuously.

How Employee Engagement, Satisfaction, and Happiness Can Stem from Feedback

Engagement and happiness are very different

While employees might be happy at work, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they are effectively engaged. Perks such as free snacks, awesome benefits packages, or Friday night parties are awesome and beneficial for morale and team building, but that doesn’t necessarily mean employee engagement is present as a result of fun. Mentoring and leading employees is a fantastic form of employee engagement that helps aspire career-oriented tasks and helps ensure employees are not only happy, but engaged in their day-to-day objectives.

Satisfaction is mediocre – you shouldn’t strive to get an answer from someone that their satisfied showing up daily 9-to-5. Encourage employees to go the extra effort and want to go one step further! Employee engagement is important, so encourage stretch goal thinking where team members can self-assess and come up with innovative, creative ways to engage themselves while also growing their skills.

Employee engagement is the commitment employees have to the organization and its success

Engaged employees care about their work and how their actions impact organizational success. Attitude transitions from working for a pay-cheque, or just for the next promotion, to working on behalf of the organization’s goals. This means that employee engagement is tied to discretionary effort. They’ll work hard, over-time without being asked to get a job done awesome the first time. They’ll do something even if their manager isn’t pay attention, because they care. And they’ll always put the success of the team ahead of personal gain.

Key Employee Feedback Principles

Give performance feedback at the right time. Immediately after a presentation isn’t the best time to chat about performance enhancements. Processing by both parties must take place. It’s important to take notes, but scheduling a time to review projects is better than ad-hoc, on the spot constructive criticism giving or questioning when it comes to the big things.

Delegate ownership and facilitate learning. This means having faith that even if someone doesn’t have 100% of the knowledge to take over something, doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be given a chance! Think back to the first time someone took a risk on you and how much more you learned from that process rather than just observing. Practice learning through doing.

Teach in ways that promote self-sufficiency, rather than answering the problem. This can be tricky as it’s easy to provide a solution, rather than think of probing questions to allow someone to draw their own. A good framework for this is:

Ask what they’d like to do less of. Often providing employee feedback is focused on positive momentum to improve upon something. Sometimes, giving feedback means recognizing that people do things they may not necessarily enjoy, but are mediocre or even good at. Just because you CAN do something doesn’t mean you want to. Nothing motivates people less than having a subpar attitude towards something.

Ask them to tease out a project they are proud of.With this question comes a lot of further micro-questions such as ‘Why this one, not another one?’ ‘What was something you’d like to continue doing beyond this project into the next?’ and so on. It’s easy to pinpoint hard or soft skills one is good at (photoshop and being collaborative, respectively) but it’s harder to ground that in concrete takeaways. This pushes a deeper connection on why they are proud and what they can take to the next level next time.

Types of Coaching by Providing Feedback

Performance Based

Providing employee feedback for performance involves asking questions after a project or duration of time. The questions focus on self-reflection. From the perspective of the employee, feedback for performance prompts questions such as, “What were you trying to accomplish?” and “What is your perception of the results achieved?”

Providing employee feedback for personal growth focuses on how you help others succeed in their career. It hinges on the question, “What support or resources can I provide to help you reach your goal?”

Examples of Good Questions to Ask for Coaching Employees

Coaching conversations bridge the gap between what the actual outcome was and the expected result by providing employee feedback. They form from the other person’s own interpretation. Conversations starters can include:

What were you trying to accomplish?

What were the actual results of what the project achieved?

What caused the gap between what you wanted to achieve and results you achieved?

A good leader can help team members think through what should be done next time to improve performance.

Real-time Employee Feedback Best Practices

Everyday interactions can provide rich feedback opportunities. It is important to transform daily interactions into real-time feedback moments. This balances out scheduled employee feedback or reflection with on-the-spot feedback.

Real-time Feedback vs. Scheduled Feedback

To determine if something is a real-time feedback session ask yourself, “Will I need more than 10 minutes?” If something is understandable in less than 10 minutes, treat it as real-time feedback. If the explanation or level of understanding needed to grow is more complex, have a scheduled employee feedback session.

Example of Providing Real-time Feedback

After a presentation allow time to digest how things went. Prompt them to reflect on their interpretation of how they expected things to go. Immediate employee feedback could only serve to leave a sour taste of ‘rubbing it in’ if it didn’t go so well. This increases the likelihood someone will be less receptive to constructive help. It is better to schedule employee feedback time. This way, everyone can reflect and prepare. It makes employee feedback a conversation, not a defence match.

Continuous Employee Feedback Best Practices

Feedback is often a pain point in any performance management process. It comes with the unsaid intentions of telling people, “You need to change.” Improvement discussions often create fractures and stress, not actual improvement. Feedback sessions become how someone needs to be different, not how they can grow. Confidence buzzkill.

Bringing Trust Makes Feedback More Receptive

Trust is often interpreted as an action. What is often misunderstood is that trusting is not an instruction, but a feeling. You can’t ask two people to trust each other and they will. There has to be the emotional willingness to trust. This starts when individuals get viewed as people, not just as subordinates in a vertical hierarchy.

Intentionally Leave Feedback Open-ended

Feedback focuses on making people matter. Use kindness as a driving element of any feedback process. When providing feedback, question what assumptions you’re bringing, so also be intentional. Intentional feedback embraces being honest about imperfections. It adjusts to what the person receiving the feedback needs. Feedback is not about asking them to fit your own definition of improvement. Feedback is about being intentional with your words in the kindest way possible to find a collaborative outcome. This says that the other person’s opinions also matter.

How to Prepare for Employee Feedback and Coaching

Create an Agenda

This keeps the meeting focused, allowing both parties to not get blind-sided. Both the facilitator and the feedback recipient should prepare and share an agenda of loose discussion topics and the purpose of the session. This includes the time you’ll be conversing and what you want as the end result of the meeting. Share the agenda couple of days before the employee feedback session so that both parties are aware of what the meeting is about. This gives prep time to come up with questions, answers, and further reflection before the meeting.

Create an Employee Feedback Template

Review any Action Items or Follow-up Notes

Review notes from previous sessions, if available. Look for any action plans that got discussed that now need a follow-up. If your teammate has created a draft of their reflection, go over the notes before the meeting so you’re prepared.

TIP: Choose a location that is private and neutral. A private corner in a coffee shop or a comfortable meeting room can provide an exclusive atmosphere. There’s no fear you’ll be overheard and misunderstood by anyone passing by. This ensures the meeting is focused without distractions.

How to Provide Effective Employee Feedback

Start With a Question

Start by opening up with a question such as “How do you think you are doing on this specific matter?” It provides context to start with and makes the person feel included in the conversation. Feedback should be a conversation, not a one-way task-list.

Bring an Objective Perspective

Be careful to separate emotions from your feedback. Feedback is for helping individuals improve. It is not an outlet to rant.

Each feedback session should be about a focused topic. Don’t bring in extra people if it’s unnecessary. Feedback should be between 2 individuals, about a particular aspect or action item.

Go in With Realistic Expectations

Everyone is at difference position in their career. Be mindful to set expectations based on previous employee feedback sessions. Do not expect everyone to be at the same level, at the same time. Feedback is about continuous growth, so be empathetic. Change takes time.

Build a Transparent Culture With Open Communication

Leading by example also means being open to help, and receive feedback at any time. Continuity is key.

Providing Effective Peer-to-Peer Feedback

In any office space there is an abundance of peers – every singly team member is your peer, regardless if they are a manager. Peer feedback focuses on the personal commitment that is made to the other, to help the other grow in an a focused area. The result is a conversation coming from the place of intentional positivity to help.

Benefits of Peer-to-Peer Feedback

Both parties get to develop leadership, communication, and mentorship skills.

You get insights on trends within the field of your peer. This provokes expertise sharing, career strategizing, provides visibility into other career paths, and transforms everyone in a role model.

New bonds get created that allow each peer to tap into new networks.

Increased sense of contribution, evoking a collaborative environment where supporting others and growth is at the core.

Follow-up Actions After Providing Employee Feedback

Review Employee Feedback Notes

During a conversation take light notes along the way. After the meeting, review your notes for accuracy. Share them with the employee to make sure you’re both on the same page with. This ensures there is a record of action items.

Ensure Employee Engagement

It’s up to both the organization and the employee to commit and engage with improvement. You can only go so far to help with growth if the resources aren’t there to support both parties. Never make promises that the team itself aren’t ready to engage with.

Template for Individual Employee Reflection

Which responsibilities do you view as most important and why?

Is there anything that has helped or hindered your growth? How can I help?

What are your stand-out contributions to the rest of team? Anything outside your scope-of-work?

What are your current professional development goals? Anything you don’t want to do or want to start doing?

Template for Management / Leadership Reflection

Am I continuously reviewing my team’s accomplishments and career plans?

How am I providing support to help my team succeed?

How can I better celebrate my team’s success and highlight their growth?